Rezoning Won't Cost Taxpayer

OPINION - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Busing rezoned high school students to schools they now attend won't cost the county more money, as he charged in a letter on this page last week. It could even cost less.

The plan he criticized allows current students at a high school to remain there, with bus transportation provided, even though their neighborhoods are rezoned into another school zone. Only incoming students in the neighborhood would have to attend the newly assigned school.

Obviously Kroll had not read the proposal made by the county task force or the transportation department's findings. Busing current Oviedo High students back there, rather than to Lyman and Lake Howell, where younger students from their neighborhoods go would require one bus fewer.

Magic? Not at all. Just concerned people who explored an idea, studied it, worked out the details and costs, and followed through.

The idea of bus service to their former schools for students who had been rezoned sprang from the concern that more than 370 students would be driving heavily congested State Road 434 twice a day from Winter Springs to Oviedo.

Safe? We didn't think so. There would also be the need for more student parking.

The idea also came from our own memories of high school days, usually at one school. The pride, the rivalry, all the memories of being a teen. Could we tear teens who can't manage their own transportation from all that and say, ''sorry about that''?

The beauty of the proposal is that we don't have to say sorry to them. We can allow them to stay in place, and at no extra cost to the taxpayer.